Tradition dictates that cars look the same from the left as the right. Not Hyundai’s new hatchback coupé, though. It has a rear door on the passenger's side but not on the driver’s. Clever idea or gimmick? More to the point, will it lure buyers away from the the obvious alternatives, the VW Scirocco and Vauxhall Astra GTC?
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Why

do they even bother with a rear window with these things !? There's no point to it, honestly. Just turn the area around the boot(let) into (ever so slightly), greater storage space - then you could get four pairs of shoes, a bag of frozen chips AND a pet hamster in there.

Re: So... what?

Panel 'miscalculation'?

It's a fine tradition, made famous by the AMC Pacer ('Mirthmobile').

They ordered doors of two different lengths and then put the longer door on the side furthest from the kerb. I'm told it worked better in countries which don't know any better and drive on the wrong side.

If the price drops because of the omission of the offside rear door, then I'm all for it, however, I suspect the price will drop for a while and then simply normalise to where it was providing no benefit to the customer and more profit to the manufacturer.

these are actually very nice cars and those hating are clearly "badge snobs". i have driven these when some arrived at the local docks where i used to work. Hyundais in general are well specced and good value for money, depreciation is really no worse than say a vw only you pay a lot less on the forecourt. after sales service is very good as well..

After the Scirocco and GTI markets..

In recent years I've Focus ST, Megane RS and a couple of others, all of which cost me a few pennies over £20k each fully spec'd up, all of them would leave this car standing.

I love the looks of it, but when you hit this price range, its under the bonnet that counts. For this kind of money and to compete, they more powerful engines. If this came with something like the VW 2.0 170BHP TDI engine, I've be heading to forecourt rather than writing this.

Modern Cars

Can someone please explain to me:

£19,690. For a quite, bog-standard, ordinary car. The USB/iPod stuff? What's that? A £5 chip nowadays stuck into just about any radio you buy? Hell, the digital photo frame I got brand-new for £20 can play MP3's, navigate my folders, etc. on a 7" screen, so the entire kit can't be worth more than a £100 or so?

And then you get stuck with weird doors, a 1.6 engine, cramped legroom, no bootspace, stupidly tiny rear windows, and - just about - 45mpg.

Last time I fired up Torque OBD on my 1995 1.8 Mondeo, it got 40mpg on average everywhere I went. Now, sure, that difference adds up over time but this car cost me £300 and I've probably spent less than that again on it in three years, and mostly for worn tyres! Call it £700 to get the in-car entertainment to the same level, and that's still never going to make the money back in its usable life based on an old scrapheap of a car (which has passed the last two MOT's with "zero comments" first time). And yet I can put a shed into my car (I have done, and a lot more besides), seat 5 passengers comfortably (and 4 of them get a door to themselves), have total vision on the rear of the car, and have no more difficulty parking it than any other.

And yet, still some people call THIS a cheap and nasty car. The amount of money being urinated away on cars in this country must be phenomenal, not to mention the "4x4 to go 100 yards makes my kids safer" crowd.

What, precisely, is the attraction in a new car? No repair bills (I'm no mechanic myself)? Lower road tax (Seriously? Averaged over a year of use?)? All you seem to get is more and more expense (god knows what a dent costs on that thing, or a smashed tail-light, or the insurance, or the service costs to keep the warranty, etc.). What am I missing about cars that makes people want to buy junk like this?

Re: Modern Cars

Actually as an example of this;

A colleague here knows nothing about cars. Her husband is mechanically minded and buys her a new car every couple of years at auction for no more than £500. He gets it mechanically sound and road legal and she uses it until she, or it, has had enough. The cycle is then repeated. During my two years working here she's on her second car and has been for some time and is talking of a replacement. Its probably cost in the region of £2000 for the cars and parts required - brakes, suspension, body panels etc - to get them roadworthy from purchase. So roughly £80 per month, say, plus the cost of tyres and everything that all road users incur.

In that same time frame i've been driving a car bought new in 2004. Its worth about £10k less than I paid for it, its cost about £2000 in servicing and repairs. So in 8 years (almost to the day) its cost about £12,000 in repairs and depreciation. Only £1,500 per year. So not much more expensive than the "cheap option" taken by my colleague.

Most of the expense incurred has been due to always taking the car to the main dealer and not using smaller private garages for repairs when required - through personal preference and convenience of location.

Re: Modern Cars

The other thing he's not counting is the value of having a skilled and trustworthy mechanic available to select the vehicle and get it up and running. I suspect they balance out pretty well after you factor that in. If you're good with cars, then you can fixup your own. If you're not, then you'll be happier with one that won't require much fixing.

Re: Modern Cars (@ Gene Cash)

>As the "cheaper option" probably has no (appreciable) re-sale value, I find this acceptable.

Down to car choice really - I know more than a few people who buy at auction, get a years motoring and show a profit overall when they sell. Hard to do that with a new car unless its a Veyron or something.

However you spin it, with a new car you're gifting the treasury a very big chunk of cash, then seeing £1000s disappear off the value as your 'new' car becomes a low mileage second hand on the trip home from the showroom.

Re: Modern Cars

I think, given that throughout the downturn corporate new car purchases have outnumbered consumer ones, most people have been taking the middle option of buying a car that's just a couple years old with low mileage. You miss the biggest depreciation hit and you get a car that still has some manufacturer's warranty on it.

We wanted a Nissan Note. New they're something like £13k for the way ours is equipped. A one year old one with 8000 miles was just over £9k. It may as well be new. You have to factor in that most people don't want to switch cars all the time. It may be economical, but it's also a pain in the arse. Plus you get used to things, and so on. We only swapped the 05 Micra because we had another kid and needed the space - we're normally the sort to drive a car until it's no longer economical. A modern car easily puts in 10 years service if you look after it well, so it'll be a helluva long time before I have to bother with this nonsense again.

If you love cars and can fix them yourself, it's an entirely different story. But that's not exactly a huge portion of the populace, is it? And I stress the "love cars" part, because while I'm perfectly capable of performing basic repairs, I seriously can't be arsed to on an economy miniMPV that's our daily driver. Back when I had an E24 635CSi that only saw sunny weekends, different story. :)

Re: Modern Cars (@ Gene Cash)

"Down to car choice really "

Some people also buy new cars cheaply. I bought a black titanium tdci smax for a paid price of about 18k (I needed to pay for tax and delivery, also this was after cashbacks and finance rebates + a £500 trade in that only cost me £500 to buy in the first place! so my trade in appreciated) brand new first registration - it should be noted that the finance was settled after month 1 for penalty of 1 month interest. It didnt depreciate in the first year. I could still sell it now for £12k. £6k depreciation in 3 years I would say is a result and certainly better than buying an 8 year old mondeo doing it up and selling it on (IMHO).

This was hardly deal of the century, "drive the deal" and "deal drivers" were churning these deals out.

Re: Modern Cars (@ Gene Cash)

I just did a quick look on deal drivers. You can get a brand new focus titanium for £15300 1.6T eco 6 speed, or a ford direct 60 plate 13k mileage 1.6 tdci titanium for £13k. That doesnt factor in the £1000 finance rebate you can get for the new one (bringing it to 14300 on the road delivered) that wouldnt be available on the direct option.

@ Andy Miller

There is a legend that BL built some three door cars by accident -- but I just don't believe their Marketing people would have had the smarts to flog them to the cops. Typically, they would have been crushed.

Incidentally, did anyone notice that there's a modern Mini with only a single rear passenger door -- but regardless of the fact that the car is built in Britain the door is on the right hand side !

Drag

>so all the sculpting does have a practical benefit.

Nope, they start out making it look nice and curvy then work on aerodynamics - its drag co-efficient is actually worse than the barge-like Audi 100 (0.30/.31) I was driving 20 years ago, but no-one would buy a car that shape these days....

Two 12v Power Sockets...

When is someone going to take the bull by the horns and put proper 12v sockets in a modern car and not keep on fitting those stupid, massive, ugly cigar lighters that masquerade as a 12v connector.!!! Come on it's the 21st century.

Re: Two 12v Power Sockets...

Well, we motorcyclists at least get Hella/DIN sockets which are an improvement, until you realise that all the accesories you want to power your gizmos, require that you remove the excrescence and solder a Hella pug on to it.

Hyundai eh?

Looks like the elephant man and Adele's love child. Woeful MPG as well for a small engined modern car. I drive a 300bhp, 2 litre turbo car, which is nearly 15 years old and I still see around 35mpg, the reviewer only got 38 in this heap (and i bet my 35 put alot more smiles on my face!).

Agreed. Maybe the reviewer is blind? For a supposedly "sporty" car, as the name implies, they're presumably selling style and the suggestion of performance. Now, maybe a three doored bread van does count as style and performance in Korea (and the Reg offices), but to me it seems a long and downhill road from the beautiful CCS concept that Hyundai came up with quite a few years back (basically taking the now outgoing Coupe, and giving it a drop top)..

The idea is that the driver can swagger towards his car, kidding himself that he's a carefree youngster who only needs two doors, whilst out of sight (almost) and out of mind (almost) the tribe clamber in on the other side. It's a pitiful idea, really, but given the existence of some really pretty and desirable cars, this new Hyundai jobby is required not by the market, but by the laws of the universe in order to balance the normal distribution.